AiQ

DB24 AiQ – Recommendations & Badges

Introduction

Aggregated Instance Quality (AiQ) scores the health, configuration and performance of each SQL Server instance. AiQ continuously scores your SQL Server environment across hundreds of parameters, each scored from 0 to 10, where 10 means optimal health. Scores are based on daily checks and re-evaluated nightly.

DB24 AiQ breaks your overall score into four key categories, each with its own set of subcategories for deeper insight:

• Cost & Efficiency
  Measures license use, version lifecycle, and resource costs. Optimizing these areas helps reduce spend and maximize your SQL Server investment.

• Security & Availability
  Monitors security settings, backups, and failover readiness. Stronger practices mean safer data and reduced downtime risk.

• Performance & Optimization
  Tracks query speed, indexing, and tuning. Healthy performance keeps systems responsive and scalable under load.

• Maintenance & Operations
  Evaluates how well your instances follow best practices in DB24. Good ops keep SQL Server healthy - whether inside DB24 or beyond.

The AiQ page has four tabs: Dashboard, Recommendations, Badges and Parameters. The sidebar shows an Environment Summary with the average scores for the current filter and lets you filter instances by tags. This article covers the Recommendations and Badges tabs.

AiQ is a restricted feature in DB24 Free Trial mode. Upgrade your license for full features and ongoing support.

Recommendations

Overview

Whenever a parameter scores below 10 on one or more instances, it appears on the Recommendations tab as a recommendation — a concrete improvement you can make to raise your AiQ score.

Recommendations are grouped by parameter, so a single card covers every affected instance, and organized into the four categories:

• Cost & Efficiency
• Security & Availability
• Performance & Optimization
• Maintenance & Operations

Impact and Critical

Each recommendation shows an Impact chip estimating how much fixing it would improve your scores:

• Impact is calculated from the parameter's weight and how far the worst-scoring instance is from a perfect 10.
• High, Medium and Low reflect that potential gain — High-impact recommendations are the best place to start.
• Recommendations in Maintenance & Operations are always shown as Low impact; they are operational hygiene rather than score drivers.

Parameters flagged as Critical get a red chip and are always sorted to the top of their category, regardless of impact. These represent risks that should be addressed first. Within a category, the remaining recommendations are sorted by impact, highest first.

Summary Bar

The summary bar at the top shows:

• Recommendations
  The number of open recommendations.

• Total Impact Potential
  The total impact potential if all of them were fixed.

• Instances
  The number of affected instances.

Working with Recommendations

• Each card is titled <Sub Category> | <Parameter> and shows Affected Instances, the Impact chip and, where applicable, the Critical chip.
• Expand a recommendation to see what the parameter checks, How to fix it, and every affected instance with its current score under Instances.
• Instances are sorted worst-first, so the biggest offenders are at the top.
• Where available, a query icon shows the SQL used to evaluate the parameter (DB24 AiQ Parameter Query), so you can inspect the underlying data yourself.
• The Search recommendations box filters on category, name, description, fix instructions, instance names, impact level and the word Critical.

Recommended Workflow

1. Start with Critical items — they represent active risks.
2. Then work through High impact recommendations for the largest score gains.
3. Re-check the following day: scores are re-evaluated nightly, so fixed items disappear automatically.

Good to Know

• Recommendations cannot be dismissed, snoozed or closed manually. A recommendation disappears when the parameter scores 10 on all instances after the nightly re-evaluation.
• When all parameters have a perfect score the tab shows Congratulations! – All parameters have a perfect score. Nothing to improve right now.
• Before the first scores have been collected the tab shows No parameter data available yet. Please wait for AiQ scores to be collected.

Badges

Overview

Badges are awards that recognize sustained AiQ health. They exist in three tiers — Bronze, Silver and Gold — and are awarded at two levels:

• Instance badges — every SQL Server instance earns its own badge based on its AiQ score.
• Environment badge — one badge for the environment as a whole.

Badges are re-evaluated nightly, so they always reflect the current state of the environment.

Tier Requirements

An instance earns a badge based on its own AiQ score:

The environment badge requires both a high average and that no instance is left behind:

The Environment Badge

The environment badge reflects the combined AiQ health of all instances. It is awarded when both the environment average and every single instance meet the tier's thresholds.

The environment badge is intentionally hard to earn: a tier is awarded only when both the environment's average AiQ score and every single instance meet that tier's thresholds. One neglected instance holds back the entire environment — which makes the environment badge a strong indicator of consistent quality across the estate.

Until the environment reaches Bronze level, the Environment section shows No environment badge yet – improve the lowest scoring instances to earn the first badge.

Progress and Tiers

• Instances that have not yet reached Bronze are shown with a grayed-out badge and the label Below Bronze.
• Turn on Show progress to see progress bars toward the next tier, both for the environment and per instance. Environment bars are shown for every tier above the currently held tier; an instance shows progress toward its next tier.
• Hover over any badge to see which tier is held and since when (Held since).
• Click a badge to open its details: the badge description, Achieved date, Scope (Environment or the instance name) and Status (Stable, or a trending-down warning).

Trending Down

A red downward arrow next to a badge means the underlying scores have dropped below the current tier's requirement:

• Trending down toward a lower tier (for example Trending down toward Bronze) — the badge will be downgraded if scores do not recover.
• At risk of losing this badge — scores have fallen below Bronze level.

Badges are not removed the moment a score dips — the drop must persist across evaluations before the badge is downgraded, so short-lived incidents don't cost you a badge. Use the warning as an early signal to check the Recommendations tab for what changed.

Changelog

Show Changelog opens the badge history: every award, upgrade, downgrade and revoke, so you can follow how the environment has developed over time. The Badges Changelog lists badge awards and revokes across the environment and its instances during the last 12 months, with the columns Occurred, Event (AWARDED or REVOKED), Scope, Badge and Evaluation Date.

Where Badges Appear

• Dashboard – the Badges widget summarizes how many instances hold each tier and how many are below Bronze level. It links to the Badges tab.
• Dashboard – the AiQ Score - Environment Average widget links to the AiQ page.
• Instance lists and instance details – the instance badge is shown next to the instance name with the tooltip AiQ <Tier> badge.

Good to Know

• Recommendations and badges are both derived from the same nightly AiQ scores. Fixing recommendations raises the parameter scores, which in turn raises the instance and environment scores that badges are based on.
• The AiQ sidebar tag filter applies to the Recommendations and Badges tabs as well as to the Dashboard and Parameters tabs.
• If scores cannot be loaded the portal shows Couldn't load AiQ scores right now. This typically happens when the AiQ scores are still being processed.

Related Documentation

• DB24 Overview - Platform introduction